Blind Ones' Pursuit
by Neophyte Ronin
Summary: Tribute to DooM. Pre-Game FFVIII world. Explicit and harsh biopic of Ellone Loire's champions, the enigmatic White SeeDs. Esthar contracts Garden to rescue a berserk research facility. Yes the conflict centers on Ellone and Laguna, trust me. Rated M


_**Official Mission Log:**_** Operation ****Tactics Twin**

**Confidential**

**I**

Entry One 2-21 4:20 am

Commander Didymus Hitori reporting

Actions: Discreetly left milady's escort craft approximately one hour ago; successfully contacted Commander D.C. Argentine upon arrival.

Conditions: favorable, according to field officers.

Situation: Deep Sea Research Center N313, off Balamb Island's southern coast, reported minor setbacks during routine field research one week ago. Six hours ago, SASE received a garbled message, and I quote:

"_Something fuckin' evil's coming outta that pit; computers' gone berserk! Send help--!_" (The rest was static)

Without knowing of its existence beforehand (until SASE petitioned additional support from us) and realizing we're the only combat-hardened troupe capable of intervening at short notice, B-Garden ordered us here pronto. We eagerly await an opportunity to protect Garden from an imminent threat, even if this _commander_ takes our presence as someone's idea of a smug joke.

Mission: Commander Argentine ordered Elisha's team inside. Apparently, I said something offensive and he delegated perimeter patrol to me.

Supplemental Log (7:40 am): Overheard gunfire, shouting orders, horrid screams, bones cracking, possible insubordination, then silence. Everyone's lost but me?

Situation: Fucking shitty. Can't escape without suitable transport; assault team took all the heavy articles away (just my Dragonfly yari, main gauge sword-breaker, and a Centran Valhalla .45 pistol? Come on...)

Mission: That's somewhere between vengeance and rescue...

Post-Script: Forgive me Ellone.

Entry Two 2-21 12:21 pm

Actions: Killed psychotic, rambling E-soldier who fired upon me; rebooted emergency power/lighting to hangar; infiltrated hangar and located main computer station; failed to decipher new encryption measures; kicked random paper basket for letting Commander Argentine reassign Elspeth (White SeeD's resident 'technomancer') to assault squadron.

Situation: Much improved after slaying that troublemaking E-soldier at least; acquired discarded hardware, including Carmack T-250 12-Gauge Shotgun (and removed its awkward axe/bayonet components) that said soldier tried using against me; some actual shells and I'll feel even better...

Mission: Emergency lighting activated; must reboot power. Maintenance/Utility department located at other side of compound. Security shut-down compromises most direct route. Require Key Cards from high-rank personnel.

Supplemental: 2-21 2:21 pm

Actions: Located "Militia Clearance" Card off another psychotic soldier. Detected no visible pattern of psychosis among soldiers; something's happening, however. Discovered new keycard type: "Magi Clearance" (required for Main Lab Department). Killed five more soldiers, one I remember speaking to Commander Argentine before dispatching assault team into base.

Situation: Excellent, despite current embattled condition; in possession of enough shells to pop seventeen melons (extracted shells from discarded hardware).

Mission: Aside from current objective, must locate "Magi Clearance" security keycard. Stopping disaster at source is only way off this damned rock.

Supplemental: 2-21 11:22 pm

Actions: You don't want to know.

Situation: Pissed off.

Mission: I found Elspeth, my resident 'technomancer'. She wasn't meant to scout corridors; she never bothered to check underfoot for the anti-personnel landmine that blasted her leg straight off. Metallic shrapnel pierced her neck; it fell out and she bled to death from what I can tell. Thank God for small favors; she'd otherwise die slowly.

The motherfucker who sanctioned White SeeD to mop up SASE and ESL's indiscretions down in that lab ought to take notice: I'm not happy anymore. I am going to shut this place down and kill everything that tries to kill me. Oh yeah, I'm out of ammo, but every shell popped off a melon...

Guess Who.

This mission is teetering dangerously close toward vengeance every second I type this. Oh, I've foregone the formal journal entry style in favor for something more... immediate.

Anyway, I never knew blackthorns wore such interesting neck braces. Yeah, I penetrated far enough inside the facility to find out there are more than just madmen running around with shotguns. Yeah, there are fucking goblins down here... matted black hair and branded. They look like they got rounded up and shipped into the slave trade because I don't remember any of these pricks ever daring to leave the Timber/Galbadian mainland to help out in your xenophobic-fucking-laboratory, Mister President.

I conclude that whatever attacked and either killed or stupefied the imbeciles down below had brought these goblin fucks as shock troops. They sure can whip anything not nailed down and try pouncing on me, but Dragonfly and my Main Gauge are ready for them.

This is the second day of operations. I locked and barricaded a water closet, but realized the water leaked all over the floor. I wasn't interested in sleeping in shit. Fortunately, I found the actual sleeping dorm, dragged out the dead straggler that hid and blasted his fucking head off and barricaded that door. I made myself comfortable in there, cleaned my hardware, dressed a few nicks and cuts, said my prayers, slept for four hours, and woke up with a massive headache. It's been roughly twenty-four hours... well now that I checked my past entries I'm clear past twenty-seven. Not the best way to greet the day, but I have enough iron rations to survive me a few more fights. Those vitamin pills sure as hell give you a head rush; you trying to get your military addicted to caffeine as well, Mister President?

Well, this is a lost cause. I mean, the maintenance section is just a big mess. Not by way of violence mind you, but of design; the lights are barely sufficient without white-washing the pipes and walls so that light can reflect off walls and not be absorbed into the black--oh, hold on...

Yeah, thought so. Those pipes above my head hold heavy electrical current. The main valves simply branch from the main generator--the larger the pipe, the more wires that tube carries. Interesting system; it lets you locate the auxiliary pumping station without much of a fuss. All I do is pump the override and the main systems will go back online, without having to aggravate myself with that hacker stuff that Elspeth was sent in to decipher...

...Okay, that took like fifteen minutes of shells, spells, and hell. Yeah, these freaks are everywhere. They aren't acting well beyond insect intelligence, but sheer numbers and the instinct to hunt, kill, and win is becoming a major pain in my ass. These blackthorns are crazy. Lucky they clawed a few wires and electrocuted themselves; that was funny, especially when their buddies either ran or tried grabbing them, only to get electrocuted with them. May God bless the law of unintended consequences!

Of course, some areas are offline because of those fuckers. Good thing they'll stay dead. Got more problems to attend to... Didymus Hitori: signing out.

Day Three Continues!

It's 4:20 am down here and I just know they'll promote me. Job ought to be chuckling from the great beyond because I considered just eating this bastard's heart after I carved it out of his chest. Well, when you run out of rations, you start getting anxious over food and two: it's a deterrent against his buddies trying anything on me. (Lest you might puke, it's a Blackthorn, not an actual E-soldier, whose heart I considered eating... but ultimately decided against).

I also found a new kind of threat down here: wendigos. They got shipped down here too. They are bloodthirsty gorilla-like bastards who enjoy wrestling with their own kind and anything shorter is fair game, too. They have similar brands to the blackthorns. This is like out of a video game. I hate wasting ammo on these guys, since they eat it up like candy. Also, Dragonfly and its dinky counterpart require sharpening and I haven't had a chance, after last night's romp through the maintenance section, to properly file the blunted bits away. I'm currently in pursuit of improved hardware to match these cretins.

Day Three (Supplemental):

Hey Job, remember that time we were contemplating brontosaurus burgers to feed the kids (the equivalent of Grade F meat, like mostly circus animals, some filler)? Well, I hurried back to the maintenance section and kicked down the door to the supply deep-pot. Forgive me for thinking outside the box, but the only ammunition this thing needs is gasoline, and they definitely have that somewhere deeper within the labyrinth-ah-base.

Right: I got a mother-fucking chainsaw, well on my way to grinding my way through those wendigos. All I need is like a mask. No, not like Esthar's... I mean that dread GF HellMasker's masque, like out of that movie Splatter-House! You remember that movie, right Mister President? God I love dead-teenager flicks, especially Enter Sandy's City (that sends milady over to the side of the ship puking!).

Uh, don't tell her I said that...

Day Four

I made it inside Esthar's Laboratory, but something is wrong. According to the schematics I pilfered from the remnants of that computer terminal's data files, the Laboratory should be three times its existent size. A whole chunk got severed from the rest; there's a big gaping hole in the structure where there should be lab, but I don't see it, and clearly, something spherical just came along and sliced off a portion and discarded the rest. Direct routes leading to the chief computer facility--that happy place where I expect answers to my many questions--is also severed.

I have to take the long route through the lab personnel sleeping quarters, because there's at least one ventilation shaft that should be intact. I have to drag a hundred pounds of hardware behind me and unravel the pipes comprising Dragonfly to pull this off, but in the long run, it's for the best because there's no guarantee I can keep pumping round after round into these psychotic fucks and acquire reimbursements of additional hardware further on.

Supplemental

I acquired a keycard for Magi Clearance from a technician who slit his wrists inside his dorm. His bunker companion watched the emo suffer and blew his own head off as well. This is beyond just starting to get ugly, people.

I also cleared through that vent shaft, Valhalla and Main Gauge taking the lead with every thing else pulling my leg (literally). After that messy business, I came inside a strange basaltic chamber with chandeliers adorned with skulls and dangling jawbones. These must be Estharian researchers, their grand efforts toward progress and rationalism made perfectly clear: they found something they shouldn't have. At least I can conjecture what they found, but if they wound up like that other deep sea research center, then I can grasp a growing pattern.

The chambers themselves had nothing, but it seemingly replaced a segment of the lab...

Day Five

Well, I'm sure it's actually Day Five, since it's technically midnight.

I let my laptop recharge in an outlet; seems like everything's copasetic in terms of battery life. Got to hand it to those lithium-ion type batteries, they're super-powerful.

Anyway, I browsed the system for data files explaining why these idiots got screwed. The monitor glared back as I surfed pornography... that is, sought digital video files in what I assumed is some lonely researcher's private stash (how he hid it in the system is something I'd ask Elspeth--oh, wait, she's no longer alive! I'll just ask her right as I fail to safely escape this fucking pit).

My worst fears are confirmed, Garden Master, Mister Estharian President... whoever else (you know who you are, fucking clown-shoe), you reading this? Okay, you see this place isn't really for manufacturing new space delivery/reception systems like that six-shooter you fire off to that space station. Said precious space system simply disappeared around the time this place got hosed, and I know why:

These mother-fucking interlopers are conducting magi-tek experiments... specifically, a field of inter-dimensional bypassing which we at Trabia and Balamb Gardens' inner circles call "**that shit that Ereskigal/Diabolos, the Warden of Hell, knows all about**". This means whoever's hunting me down is trying to protect a secret: Esthar fucked up and let something through their precious portals that wasn't supposed to interfere, much less kill everything. They're hunting me now.

Also, I've yet to find _sane_ survivors.

Exceeding mortal bounds invite something beyond death: absolute annihilation. We at Garden kept Diabolos in a bottle because we didn't want to try this shit, period. Now that you idiots have, it falls on me to save both our asses. Hope you're happy. I certainly am not. I demand a pay-raise.

Day Whatever...

I swear to Hyne, if he exists, then he's got a dirty sense of humor. Superstition and ignorance are preferable to exploring the ravages of scientific rationalism... because nothing makes any fucking sense down here!

There're more than one basalt-brick chamber. There's marble and granite, metamorphic too. I never thought they'd extract chunks of rock and coral from the ocean's surface and adorn this icy cavern. Also, there's something totally and wholly wrong when the original technological components stuck out at me as I descended the stairwell.

I found what constitutes an alien atelier; reagents and tools of inhuman make. They experimented on live bodies and conducted insane space-time experiments. Stalagmites take years to form; there's no way they'd form in less than an hour. Someone hastened time's progression over a water torture device and impaled an Estharian soldier in the most unusual way: a stalagmite adorns his head.

Last thing I remember is a bunch of tentacles grappling me from behind. The creature spoke some alien language mostly to itself (it was murmuring; even I could tell it was disgusted with my progress).

Then I blank out and wake up in a glass tube. My associates Montague and Capulet were naked in the same tube; Montague couldn't stop shivering and Capulet couldn't stop weeping. I didn't want to ask; I just said: hey, feeding time, there's our chance.

Illithid never saw it coming.

So you know, right now I'm technically unarmed save my unloaded Valhalla. They expect me to pistol-whip and ninja-kick my way to freedom, but hey, _I'm game_. At least we reacquired my laptop... one big excuse to attempt an escape, so we can tell you fuckers off. I'm still awaiting that pay-raise you owe me.

Post-Script: Montague raped his sister Capulet. She forced him. Forgive me, Ellone.

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_Inspired by the DooM video game and Lovecraft horror stories; references abound. Definite change of pace for author and reader. This is a 'Fork' story ala Twilight Zone; underneath the leader's cold delivery of facts about a perilous mission sanctioned by the Estharian government is a hidden ending. For future reference, SASE stands for Special Air Service of Esthar and Estharian Space Laboratories, respectively._


End file.
